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Dante was engulfed in a storm of slashes and energy.
Aisha and Stella attacked in sync—a furious light and an invisible poison. It was like watching an eclipse form amidst the destruction.
Dante retreated, not out of fear, but calculation. The King was analyzing. He was more cautious.
— Hmph… so this is what Jade's legacy has become… — he snarled, raising his hand.
The space around him distorted. The particles of light and poison lost form. As if everything approaching was drowned in a silent darkness.
Stella charged first, her sword shining like a miniature sun. Jade's energy guided her movements, cutting through the distortion as if it had known this trick for centuries.
— He's going to try to trap us in that zone — she shouted. — Don't stop, Aisha!
Aisha didn't respond with words. She felt. Saw him. The flow. The rot in Dante's energy. She dove into the vacuum, her spiritual blade spinning in the air, slicing through an invisible blast approaching from the side.
— There.
She felt the imbalance. Her spiritual poison was working, even if slowly.
She spun her body in the air, using the energy to propel a kick straight into Dante's chin, who recoiled with a grunt.
— Your flow is disorganized… — Aisha murmured, with a bloody, slight smile. — You're getting slow, King…
Dante roared. The sky tore open.
Black flames in the shape of meteors began to fall upon the city. Each impact was thunder, each crater a possible grave.
Stella raised her sword and screamed, channeling an explosion of light that shot through the sky and vaporized several meteors before they hit the ground. Her spiritual energy vibrated around her, forming a luminous armor on her body. Her eyes burned with Jade's light.
Dante appeared behind her, black sword in hand.
But Stella felt it.
— Not this time.
She spun with the blade, blocking the attack. The collision released a wave of golden and dark shock, exploding the surrounding debris.
Aisha ran over the rubble, zigzagging, manipulating her blade mentally to attack Dante from behind. He noticed and launched an invisible blast—but Aisha felt it the moment it was born and threw herself aside.
The spiritual blade struck Dante's shoulder.
He roared. And the city trembled.
Dante sank his feet into the ground and expanded a sphere of black energy, pushing both away. The pressure was so great that cracks spread across the ground like shattered glass.
— You two… irritate me.
He then vanished.
Appeared in the air above, his body wreathed in pure energy, and a massive black streak—like an arrow tearing the sky—descended towards Stella.
Aisha, still dazed, tried to shout, but Stella was already reacting.
— Jade… now!
Jade's sword exploded in silvery energy, creating a luminous dome. The impact of the streak made the barrier groan, like metal against the bones of the world, but it held.
Stella fell to her knees, her breath faltering.
Aisha felt Dante's flow becoming increasingly unstable. The poison was corroding him from within—slowly, but steadily.
— Stella… together. Now.
Light and poison met.
Aisha channeled her spiritual energy around Stella's body—a poisonous cloak over the light. A combination neither of them had ever tested.
Stella felt it. The connection with Jade became even clearer.
— Let's kill him, Aisha.
Dante noticed the fusion of energies. For a moment… he hesitated.
It was enough.
The two vanished.
Strikes came from all sides—thrusts of light, slashes from the spiritual blade, spiritual explosions. Aisha struck the energy points on Dante's body that were already weakened. Stella broke through the dimensional blocks with her concentrated light.
The King staggered. For the first time since he appeared…
But then…
Dante screamed.
Space froze.
Light flickered.
The ground split into millions of suspended fragments.
— ENOUGH!
Dante unleashed all his power, creating a zone of pure darkness that devoured the surrounding energy. Aisha's poison burned away. Stella's light faded. He raised his arms—and the world around began to tilt, as if the center of gravity was pulled towards him.
The battle seemed to have reached its end.
Aisha panted, her arms trembling. Her spiritual blade wavered in the air, as if begging for rest.
Stella was on her knees, the light from Jade's sword almost extinguished.
Both were covered in dust, blood, and wounds.
And Dante remained standing.
— Weak. — his voice was low, unhurried. — Will... is not enough.
The King slowly raised his hands, like someone performing a dark ritual.
The space around the warriors distorted, becoming opaque and dense. Darkness in its purest form began to gather in Dante's palms, compressed like invisible blades.
Two strikes. Two targets. Two ends.
Gravity made any escape impossible.
But then...
A body fell from the sky, hitting the ground with a dry crack, a few meters from Dante. He stopped.
"What the..." He thought.
Dr. Isha.
Maskless. Bleeding. Dead.
Dante stared at the body for a moment. His red eyes rose to the sky and saw a dark portal closing. The King sighed.
And then, he heard it.
The sound of chains.
Dante laughed. A dry, hoarse sound, almost nostalgic.
— Heh... finally... AKIRA!
A slash of darkness tore through the air like inverted thunder. Dante crossed his arms and blocked, but was hurled backward, sliding dozens of meters and breaking everything in his path.
Akira materialized from the shadows in front of the two warriors. His presence was like a silent blade amidst the chaos. The shadows around him bent to his will. His kusarigama spun with a hypnotic whir.
— Take this as a rest. I'll hold him now.
Stella tried to protest, but Aisha held her arm.
— He's different... — Aisha murmured. — He came ready.
— Let's focus on recovering our breath and help later.
Dante stood up, rolling his shoulders. His smile had widened. His gaze was now that of a predator.
— Akira... I don't intend to kill you.
— I know. But that's your problem.
The battlefield trembled.
Dante vanished and reappeared a hair's breadth from Akira, throwing a devastating punch. Akira ducked and counterattacked with the chain of his kusarigama, which snaked around the King's back. Dante jumped upward, invoking a spiral of black flames that collapsed into spikes against the ground.
Akira vanished into the shadow of a pillar and emerged above, throwing dozens of enchanted black chains that sought to bind Dante's limbs.
The King smiled.
— Still using tricks?
Dante snapped his fingers. An explosion of negative energy expanded, destroying the chains and hurling Akira against a distant wall.
On impact, dust rose. But Akira had already vanished again.
Until Dante heard, right behind him.
— Shadow Realm...
Dante's gaze became sharp and he was swallowed.
A dark, dense veil covered an area with a six-meter radius.
Small but sufficient.
"My body... It's ridiculously heavy... Like before."
A shadow blade pierced Dante's leg.
And another pierced his shoulder.
Akira appeared and disappeared between the shadows, using the Shadow Realm: a domain where light no longer obeyed natural laws. Dante was forced to fight on a field he didn't fully master.
"This technique, he hasn't refined it enough yet, the ground still exists down here.
I can use my techniques on the material then..."
Dante placed his hands on the ground and summoned a fissure in the street, a fissure from which flames, currents, and stones erupted.
The shadow domain cracked with the impact. Akira was thrown out of range of his own shadows.
Dante appeared above him and drove his black sword downward. Akira rolled, the blade tore the ground, creating an abyss of black energy.
Akira stood up, panting.
— He's... faster. More brutal.
And then Dante spoke, his voice leaking power:
— I'm already tired of playing. This world doesn't need you. Except you, Akira. You... still have a role to fulfill.
— I am not a piece on your board.
— Of course you are. Until now, you've done exactly what I expected.
Akira gritted his teeth. The Shadow Realm reactivated, but Dante snapped his fingers and distorted space.
The distortion made time itself within the domain irregular. Akira's clones moved at different speeds. Chains rose from the ground but were shattered by invisible blasts.
Aisha, even weak, watched, trying to understand.
— He... is playing with the laws... of physics?
— Of existence. — Stella, or rather Jade, completed, furrowing her brow. — We are facing a being who has already transcended life and death.
Akira gathered all the shadows into a single point and exploded them into piercing spears. Dante was engulfed, swallowed by darkness. For a moment, silence.
But then...
The black flames emerged like a corrupted phoenix.
Dante passed through the spears as if they were leaves in the wind. Appeared in front of Akira and punched his stomach. The shinobi spat blood and was thrown against a wall.
The King walked.
— You amuse me... but you are far. Very far.
He raised his hand.
Stella and Aisha were pulled by an invisible force, bringing them close to the King.
— And now... let's clear the board.
But before the final blow, Akira rose. Bleeding. Staggering.
He stepped forward and prevented the King from striking his companions.
— What if I don't let you?
To be continued...